[SeedlingSam]

First time growing from seed and soil. I watched a ton of you tube videos prior to starting. From many sources growing in soil, I heard about how a good method to water is to saturate the soil when watering to when it comes out the bottom a bit, when it stops dripping out, weigh the newly saturated plant/pot. Don't water again until it's half the weight.

This seems straightforward but oddly enough there is next to no mention of scales and people just lift the plant with their arms to determine the weight.

I weighed newly saturated seedlings in 15 oz solo cups and it weighed 360 grams. I asked Chat GPT if I should then water again when it's around 180 grams (half of 360). Chat is telling me to re water again around the 300-gram mark which is nowhere close to 50 percent.

So, then I decided to read a bunch of growing forums where this is discussed but I couldn't find anyone actually talking specifically what percentage of the saturated weight. They all seem to say, "when it feels lighter" .

Do you wait until 50 percent? 60 percent? 70 percent? 80 percent of saturated weight?

 

[Galgrows]

Dude don't over complicate it. Learn to "feel" the difference when you lift the cup or pot. Write it down even the day you water begin with basic steps. No i don't let it dry out completely but i've trained myself to know the feel/weight difference. I don't know the saturated weight cause i don't weigh the pots on a scale. And i sure don't water to run off in small cups with seedlings just do it when plants are at least 6wks and in their final pots.

 

[GNick55]

ya your over complicating it,.
but you can use the scale for solo cups or small pots,. take a solo cup and fill it up with the soil pack it down some and weigh it,. there’s your dry weight,. let’s say it’s 100gms and when fully saturated it’s 360gms, i’d be watering around 175gms,.
with watering soil you need to water it in stages and not all at once,.
so say your solo cup takes 250ml to fully saturate than you would water like 50-75ml at a time with a good 20 mins or so inbetween each watering until finished you can see when it’s been fully saturated by putting the cups on a towel etc as it’ll be wet when down,..

 

[SeedlingSam]

Thanks for the replies. Galgrow you said "And i sure don't water to run off in small cups with seedlings just do it when plants are at least 6wks and in their final pots."

This is what was confusing to me as I was learning about growing weed from seedlings. People would say they don't saturate when they are seedlings and they don't water near the stems etc. In my experience so far, when I tried watering with little amounts of water, my seedlings have died. My first 8 died that were started in 15 oz cups.

Then I decided I am just going to try 3 oz containers and saturate the soil each time I water and wait until it's half the weight to water again. After a week or so these 3 seedlings were not looking good, they had long skinny stems with just small starter leaves (even though my light measured 200 ppfd) and they were curling downward more each day. These were looking like my first 8 that died. Clearly something was wrong so I decided to buy a humidity dome.

They seemed healthier as soon as they were growing in a humidity dome. I also decided to use the lights that came with the AC infinity dome. I had 2 more seeds germinated that I started in the dome along with three that were started a week prior to buying the dome. The 2 that started in the humidity dome looked good. They didn't have the downward curling leaves, and the stems were not as long, but the other 3 I started a week earlier before buying the dome, had the downward curling leaves with long skinny stems and were looking like they were going to die, and the curl was getting worse each day.

While reading in forums about people with seedling issues, I happen to read one from a person that had seedlings that looked like mine. Seedlings that looked like they are not getting enough light. They had long skinny stems with small starter leaves and the small leaves curled downward. This person mentioned he replanted these in a new pot and buried the long stem in the soil.

I gave this a try not thinking it would work but I had nothing to lose since they were clearly going to die. I transferred the 3 bad looking seedlings with long skinny stems with just 2 small, serrated leaves curling downward, into a 15 oz cup of seed starting soil. This time I mixed in 30 percent perlite to the mix. I buried the stem, so it poked out about an inch from the soil. To my surprise the next day, these were looking very healthy, and I had a ton of growth which was the same experience as the person who wrote about it. As of now things are looking very good. It's been about 4 days since and growth is taking off.

I also decided to trans fer the other two healthy looking 3 0z seedlings into the 15 oz cups yesterday so we will see how those do.

There is so much conflicting information out there that we as new growers basically have to find out for ourselves through experience what works.